now appearing at the Apollo...

artist vs. painter

unveiling at the R&R Boston

"you look marbleous"

New York City's illustrious Apollo Theatre is undergoing a comprehensive restoration that will return the once opulent and intimate 1913 theatre to the grandeur of its 1940s heyday as the center of the Harlem Renaissance.

Canning Painting Studios is working with New York City based architects Beyer Blinder + Bell to implement the architects' Adamesque paint scheme. The collaborative effort requires that the team translate the scheme from theory and paper onto the interior surfaces. The fine tuning and adjusting that takes place during this stage is an essential part of the design phase for any project. Adjusting and balancing color and decoration to be effective in the overall space takes patience and flexibility - and attention to the principles of the Adamesque style*. Before installing the paint scheme, Canning staff repaired and restored the decorative plaster substrate in three representative areas designated to receive the mock-up treatment.

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The painting industry has changed dramatically since the 1950s when being designated a journeyman painter meant that the painter had a certain, qualified skill level in all phases of decorative finishes including: woodgraining, marbling, striping, stenciling, architectural trompe l'oeil, and sign lettering in various letter styles. Mixing colors in any media to match an existing design scheme was a basic skill, not a specialty. Precise identification and replication of decorative techniques from any historic period was expected and learned by those choosing the painting profession.

Today, the decorative arts, as they are called, seem to have been relegated to a classification of painter as artist, not craftsman. Part of the problem is that the designation of painter no longer carries with it specific qualifications or skills. With the weakening of professional training and the mass marketing of easy-to-use, do-it-yourself products, there is no longer a perceived need for an intensive apprentice to journeyman learning process. While that may be true for the application of the products, it is not true when it comes to the history, theory and design principals used to choose and apply color. Therefore, the lowest common denominator of expectation is placed on the painter of today, and "special" decoration techniques are assigned to those who are considered artists.

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Watch your email for a special edition of the Canning Chronicles that will give you a sneak peak at our plans for the Restoration & Renovation Show being held in Boston, March 19 to 23. Canning Studios will be hard to miss - and we certainly don't want you to. Please stop by, say hello, and tell us what you think of our new look.

Hope to see you in Boston!

When Canning Studios was repainting the large, Corinthian columns at the National Building Museum in Washington DC, the building remained open to the public. The eight, 75 foot tall columns are 25 feet in circumference and made from a core of brick covered in plaster and painted to look like marble. They are considered to be among the tallest in the world.

A visitor to the building stopped to watch as Canning painters applied the solid base coat to one of the columns. Visibly disturbed, she stopped one of the painters to ask why they were painting the beautiful "marble" columns.